Effect of variable viscosity on free flow of non-Newtonian power-law fluids along a vertical surface with thermal stratification

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of thermal stratification together with variable viscosity on free convection flow of non- Newtonian fluids along a nonisothermal semi infinite vertical plate embedded in a saturated porous medium. The governing equations of continuity, momentum and energy are transformed into nonlinear ordinary differential equations using similarity transformations and then solved by using the Runge-Kutta-Gill method along with shooting technique. Governing parameters for the problem under study are the variable viscosity, thermal stratification parameter, non-Newtonian parameter and the power-law index parameter.The velocity and temperature distributions are presented and discussed. The Nusselt number is also derived and discussed numerically.